Raiders bombard No. 6 Knights

Southern Oregon head coach Brian McDermott didn't fret over the three-game losing streak his team took into Friday's game against sixth-ranked Warner Pacific.

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By Joe Zavala

DailyTidings.com

By Joe Zavala

Posted Jan. 26, 2013 at 12:30 AM

By Joe Zavala
Posted Jan. 26, 2013 at 12:30 AM

Raiders 97, Knights 82

Recap: Kyle Tedder hit six of SOU's 16 3-pointers and scored 24 points in the second half, and David Sturner had 21 points and 15 rebounds as the Raiders snapped their three-game losing streak and ...

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Raiders 97, Knights 82

Recap: Kyle Tedder hit six of SOU's 16 3-pointers and scored 24 points in the second half, and David Sturner had 21 points and 15 rebounds as the Raiders snapped their three-game losing streak and handed No. 6

Warner Pacific its first loss since

Dec. 17.

Up next:

Concordia at Southern Oregon, 7:30 p.m. tonight.

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Southern Oregon head coach Brian McDermott didn't fret over the three-game losing streak his team took into Friday's game against sixth-ranked Warner Pacific.

The shots have been there, he insisted, they just haven't been falling.

Well, they fell on Friday, over and over again until a game that was supposed to be a nip-and-tuck Cascade Conference slugfest turned into a Raider romp.

Kyle Tedder scored all of his 24 points in the second half, David Sturner had 21 points and 15 rebounds and Southern Oregon hit 16 3-pointers in a 97-82 rout of Warner Pacific at a rocking Bob Riehm Arena.

Tedder hit 6 of 9 3-pointers, including three during an SOU onslaught at the start of the second half that buried the visitors. The result was sweet revenge for the Raiders (16-7, 8-4 Cascade), who suffered an overtime loss at Warner Pacific (18-5, 9-2) on Dec. 22 but were never threatened in the second half Friday.

"We just were feeding off of each other's game," Sturner said. "(Tedder) hit that first 3, then it was just whoever's next. We were hitting 3's and taking advantage of their zone."

The Raiders went from red hot to white hot in the second half, hitting five 3-pointers in the first 3:33 to extend an eight-point lead to 20, 56-36, with 16:27 to go.

Tedder kicked off the onslaught with a corner 3. Eric Thompson added another 15 seconds later and Tedder swished a bomb from the corner on SOU's next possession then slapped hands with front-row fans as the pro-Raider crowd erupted.

Warner Pacific head coach Jared Valentine called a timeout, but the Raiders' outside shooting clinic was only just beginning. Sturner, who was 3-for-3 from outside, nailed a 3 to make it 53-34 with 17:08 to go, and Tedder, who was held scoreless in an 0-for-2 first half, made another for a 20-point margin.

"That was awesome," said Tedder, who added four steals. "We were just pumped up, ready to come out in the second half. That's what we do. We're a second half team. We're capable of exploding at any second and that's what's awesome about our team. We just wait for our time and when it happens, it happens."

The Knights tried to make a game of it with their own shooting barrage, crawling to within 10 points, 64-54, on Doug Thomas' inside bucket with 11:54 to go. But SOU's Tim Weber answered with yet another 3, which sparked a 16-7 rally that effectively ended Warner Pacific's comeback bid.

Tedder's back-to-back 3-pointers capped that rally, too.

The combination of Sturner's all-around game and Southern Oregon's outside shooting gave the Raiders an eight-point halftime lead, 39-31.

The Raiders hit 14 of 27 shots in the first half, including 7 of 13 from long range. Sturner, Weber and Taylor Roos hit two 3-pointers apiece to help the Raiders survive Thompson's early foul trouble. Thompson, who hit just 2 of 6 shots in the opening half, picked up his second foul with 6:34 to go and didn't see the court again until the second half.

Sturner more than picked up the slack. He had 11 points and eight rebounds before halftime, including a 3 and a fist-pump with 3:10 to go that gave the Raiders a 33-28 lead. Later, Weber drained back-to-back treys, extending SOU's cushion to 39-30, its largest lead of the half.

"We had great bench play," McDermott said.

SOU's bench outscored Warner Pacific's 27-12.

In contrast to the first meeting between the two teams, SOU had little trouble attacking Warner Pacific's zone. The Raiders dominated in nearly every statistical category to snap the Knights' nine-game winning streak, shooting 53 percent (33-for-62), outrebounding Warner Pacific 38-25 and finishing with 25 assists.

Roos ended up with 17 points and Thompson 15 and seven rebounds. The Raiders also received a strong performance out of backup center Jordan West, a freshman, who had 10 points and three rebounds in one of his most significant contributions of the season.

McDermott said the Raiders' shooters were due for a breakout game.

"We should get hot sometimes," he said. "We've got a good group of shooters. We're going to make them. If we take our time and get the kind of shots we were getting tonight, we're going to make a lot of them."